Plateworks Desqueeze is a small Mac tool for photographers who shoot stills through an anamorphic lens. The lens squeezes each photo. Desqueeze sets one tag in every DNG in a folder, so Lightroom and Camera Raw show each photo at its correct shape.
- Platform
- Mac, Apple silicon
- Requires
- macOS 14 or later, and Lightroom or Camera Raw
- Price
- Free, MIT license
- Status
- Version 0.1.0
- Made by
- Badwater Guidance LLC
The tag
No pixel changes. One small value in the file.
A DNG carries a tag named DefaultScale that tells a raw editor how wide to draw each pixel. Desqueeze writes the lens's squeeze factor there, from 1 to 4, and Lightroom and Camera Raw draw the photo at its true width. The picture data is untouched. Remove sets the tag back to no stretch.
Choose a folder, pick the factor, and run. The window reports what it converted, what it set, what it skipped and why.
Sony raw files
ARW files become DNG first.
The tag works only in a DNG, so Desqueeze converts Sony ARW files with dnglab, which ships inside the app. For the Sony A7S III it writes Adobe's own levels into the new DNG, so it renders like one from Adobe DNG Converter. Other Sony cameras convert with a correct shape and dnglab's levels, or through Adobe DNG Converter when it is installed.
Your originals stay where they are unless you tick the box to move them to the Trash for that run. It never deletes a file.
What it does not do
It does not stretch pixels or export an image. It does not read subfolders, convert raw files other than Sony ARW, or set a vertical stretch. Finder and Quick Look ignore the tag, so their previews stay squeezed. It makes no network connection and has no update check, so new versions are listed on the Releases page. See privacy.